- alcoholism: Alcohol costs money, interferes with your ability to work, and leads to expensive reckless behavior.
- drug addiction: Like alcohol, but more expensive, and likely to eventually lead to legal troubles you’re too poor to buy your way out of.
- single parenthood: Raising a child takes a lot of effort and a lot of money. One poor person rarely has enough resources to comfortably provide this combination of effort and money.
- unprotected sex: Unprotected sex quickly leads to single parenthood. See above.
- dropping out of high school: High school drop-outs earn much lower wages than graduates. Kids from rich families may be able to afford this sacrifice, but kids from poor families can’t.
- being single: Getting married lets couples avoid a lot of wasteful duplication of household expenses. These savings may not mean much to the rich, but they make a huge difference for the poor.
- non-remunerative crime: Drunk driving and bar fights don’t pay. In fact, they have high expected medical and legal expenses. The rich might be able to afford these costs. The poor can’t.
Yet as Charles Murray keeps reminding us, all of the pathologies on my list are especially prevalent among the poor.
Poverty and Behavior: Bryan Caplan
09 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, health economics, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, poverty and inequality, welfare reform Tags: causes of poverty, economics of personality, poverty and inequality
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